Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A few weeks ago, I noted Caroline Glick's expose of shari'a-friendly investments. Today, there's more on the topic at Front Page Magazine.

AAOIFI's members and shari'a board include Saudi Arabia's Dallah Al-Baraka Group, al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation and Kuwait Finance House--all implicated in al Qaeda and other terror funding, according to former national counter-terror coordinator Richard Clarke. Other board members are the Islamic Development Bank, also known as the Bank of the Intifada for funding families of suicide bombers, whose principal owners are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lybia and Egypt, and not one, but two U.S.-sanctioned terror states, Sudan and Iran. Islamic finance experts consider AAOIFI fatwas standards to which all shari'a banks and products, even in the U.S., must adhere. But UAE’s showcase Bourse on Oct. 22, 2007 denied its Islamic "purity" to the Partnership for New York City.

U.S. banking and investment laws guarantee individual property rights, require full disclosure, and prohibit criminal or terrorist activities. Western bankers and businessmen, however, oblivious to shari'a and financial jihad history, clamor for Muslim petrodollars (supposed surpluses from overextended Middle Eastern exchanges) pouring into U.S. markets.

That last passage reminds me -- for more than one reason -- of something Leonard Peikoff noted that we could have done over a half-century ago that would have prevented this from existing as an issue to begin with: protet American property rights.

The first country to nationalize Western oil, in 1951, was Iran. The rest, observing our frightened silence, hurried to grab their piece of the newly available loot.

This failure to protect the rights of our citizens consistently in the first place is now feeding on itself in the form of tempting investments that pragmatic businessmen will not resist -- or craven politicians dare to oppose.

"Given the religious rather than financial aim of Shari'a-compliant investing, it isn't surprising that Shari'a-compliant investments are little more than a word game. Paying lip service to the Koranic prohibition on interest-based transactions and risky investments, Mawdudi and Qutb invented various means to cover the fact that Shari'a-compliant investments involve both interest payments and risk."